Cover Stories

Did Language and Culture Trip BJP in Bengal?

Dipankar Gupta

Failing the shibboleth test

Charulata: His Allegorical Women

When the woman made a radical choice, Ray was uncomfortable. He was more comfortable showing women taking a stand against institutional orthodoxy

The Mind of Bengal

Rachel Dwyer

It is easy to see why Ray’s films were classed as arthouse in the West. In Calcutta, they were screened in cinemas which showed regular Bengali films, whose audiences in the 1950s and 1960s didn’t watch much Hindi cinema

The Inner Eye

Sudeep Paul

Ray obsessed about the tiniest detail. A sceptic of the time had grudgingly admitted: ‘How did a city boy know that when a frog dies, it floats on its back?’

A Humanist Behind the Camera

Sumit Mitra

Ray chose his stories with the dexterity of a jeweller picking his diamonds. And he was far from naïve on politics

From Genius to Divinity

MJ Akbar

Satyajit Ray never touched alcohol, and listened to a sonata by Beethoven on his turntable gramophone at breakfast. What else could possibly be required for the biodata of a Calcutta god?